


A Targeted Ruination of Jealousy

by explodinganyway



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Canon Compliant, Conversations with Ghosts, F/F, Magic, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, You Have Been Warned, me trying to write anything appropriate is such a challenge, you can either blame this on Casper or like...reality...idc
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-08
Updated: 2020-11-08
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:41:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27450640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/explodinganyway/pseuds/explodinganyway
Summary: She wants to go back in time. She doesn’t want to have to live it all again but she keeps overthinking on how different she’d look in the blues of her friend’s house. She wonders if they all would have fought as hard.
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Helena Ravenclaw, Hermione Granger/The Grey Lady
Kudos: 1





	A Targeted Ruination of Jealousy

**Author's Note:**

> Oh sorry, was I at all subtle?

She’s not being petulant, not sulking over a decision that time has made irrelevant except she definitely is; sulking further into her chair while still valiantly trying to not offend the company she’s in. She doesn’t want to talk to Luna today. She is grumpy and it has nothing but the sour taste of bittersweet annoyance to it. Hermione liked the House she had been put in and her actions in the war only make her more proud of the achievements that they had all won together. She loves her house and all the accomplishments that came with such a prestigious title. She even usually likes the colours, garish though they sometimes feel, but today she is petulant. She is looking at the blue and silver threads that run across Luna’s neck, the striped scarf that they all swear they never wear but then put on the second it gets cold enough. She just wants to know why one certain kind of intelligence (Luna, blank eyed but fighting with more spells than Hermione’s seen coming out of almost silent lips) was valued by the ghost of a woman Hermione doesn’t know how to put down while her confidence or honour or bravery against whatever means, ruled her out for such a choice. She feels desperate today, not like a usual offhand thought. She wants to go back in time. She doesn’t want to have to live it all again but she keeps overthinking on how different she’d look in the blues of her friend’s house. She wonders if they all would have fought as hard.

She catches the last train of Luna’s vague conversation and half heartedly agrees, agrees much faster when she sees her friends face drop but it’s hard to undo such a quick and meaningless damage. 

“It’s okay,” Luna tells her, the slight woman never been able to stop herself from saying what others wouldn’t. “You don’t have to listen to me if your head is too full today.” It’s an acquiesce if she’s ever heard one but the gesture is appreciated. When Luna stands up to make another tea she goes to place her hand on Hermione’s head but Hermione flinches too quickly, too brutally, and ends up moving herself away from the touch. It’s not Luna’s fault, but the war left something sour through the base of her spine, some magic not leaving her body the way muggles talk about trauma. She’s never seen a bomb but wands explode in ways that leave stars behind eyes too. Maybe her stare is as blank as Luna’s sometimes. She shakes her limbs and tries to get her head to rejoin what point her friend was making but the distraction she’s feeling mostly means she just waits for the tea. This time when Luna’s skin brushes hers as she passes the cup she makes a sterling effort to not flinch. 

She also makes effort to not talk about what’s running obsessively through her mind. Petty jealousy isn’t something she’s worn well in the past and, if this is even what she’s feeling, she can ignore it for a while longer. The tea is minty and sweet and she somehow feels like she’s just brushed her teeth even as the sugar warms her through. When they are both content to sip and Luna’s discarded her scarf to the side of her Hermione let’s her fingers run gently across the knit. Petulant; it feels a little rougher than that but she knows it’s close to the truth. When they say goodbye to each other Hermione hugs Luna but her hands don’t touch anything but the scarf. She squeezes tight to her friend and hope some sort of care can still get through despite her own aversion. It’s not towards Luna, touch just feeling like picking up the wrong end of a wand. 

She apparates.

If she had a pensive at home she’d empty herself into it. If she was still at Hogwarts she’d sulk in the library. Her hand twitches for a second, almost upending a basket of washing she hasn’t put away yet before she stops the spark but there was just a book that came into her head unbidden. A book she needed instantly. A book she simply had to have her hands on. She walks over to her own library in habit, lets her hands skim the volumes but doesn’t actually look at the titles because she’s still thinking of the one she doesn’t have. Hogwarts’ library was the best part of her time there and she ruminates almost weekly over some volume or other that she doesn’t have a thing like in her collection. 

She picks up A History of Magic, cover worn and pages already making the turn from paper to the feel of fabric. If it opens to a particular page then she tries not to think of it as her own fault although knows that no magic runs unintentionally through her tomes. She’s the only one overthinking on that particular topic so the book, so the page, so the words; and then, so the ghost.

She can’t say she’s done it before even though she has, but ghost calling is just not a marketable skill, everyone scoffing over the apparitions’ presumed knowledge while they were all in school and the easy camaraderie turning scorning the further they all traveled from it. She writes to Victor but only asks of the ghosts at his school once before his abrupt answer makes her wonder if it’s not an appropriate question. She doesn’t know if ghosts were so beautiful at other schools, if they were as benevolent, so willing to fight in front lines. If they were or weren’t Victor doesn’t mention the matter again and she shelves her pervading interest. The skill just isn’t valuable, the right voice never answering quite at the right time or the wrong eyes appearing in the mirror instead of the ones she’d called on. Practise, is what her logical brain tells her, but the lack of value of her skill so far makes her unwilling to spend more time on it. 

The eyes are almost comically fast in their arrival. 

“Why wasn’t I put in your mother’s house?” she asks the almost solid form of one eye she knows isn’t hers in the mirror. She’s cold, but hasn’t put on her old red and gold scarf. She’s petulant still. She can see the ghost smirking. She can’t ignore the annoyance of what she’s sure she herself got wrong. There must have been something too stubborn in her brain to have gotten placed where she was. She must have been stupider than they led her to believe. She shouldn’t have fought all her muggle teachers in primary school to have been classed as brash by her peers. She should have been better, more gentle, less brave. She looks up from the book and into the mirror then completely, knowing the face right to ask her questions to. She has a need for answers still and so, stupidly, believes that proves her point.

The ghost of Helena Ravenclaw laughs at her as if she knocked.


End file.
